Table of contents for Issue 107 December 2010 in RUE MORGUE

Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood – it might just be the perfect Christmas film. It’s such an affront to the so-called holiday spirit that when I watched it on Christmas Day a few years ago, it kinda felt like kicking Santa right square in the jingle bells. I like anything that puts some tarnish on the tinsel, though, because I hate Christmas. Hiss, boo, humbug, etc. Yeah, yeah… To clarify, there are things I love about the Christmas season: time off, gathering with friends and family, parties, generally being thoughtful, eating Mandarin oranges and, of course, drinking eggnog fortified with the haughty burn of liquor. But there’s so much I despise about it, too. Mainly it’s the one-two punch of Christianity and consumerism – lawns filled with plastic nativity scenes…

WERE YOU AFRAID OF SANTA CLAUS AS A KID? WAS IT THE GIANT BEARD, THE BLOOD-RED SUIT WITH FUR TRIM, OR THE ALMOST SINISTER-SOUNDING “HO, HO, HO” THAT MADE YOU QUAKE IN YOUR BOOTS? MAYBE YOU’RE STILL A LITTLE WARY OF THE HOLIDAY FAT MAN. WELL, THAT’S NOTHING – SOME CULTURES OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA HAVE TRADITIONALLY HAD A TRULY SINISTER VERSION OF ST. NICK, NOT THE JOLLY, COCA-COLA-SCRUBBED BEARER OF GIFTS WITH THE FABLED NAUGHTY LIST, WHOSE BIGGEST THREAT WAS A LUMP OF COAL IN YOUR STOCKING ON CHRISTMAS MORN’. SOMETIMES, SANTA WAS DOWNRIGHT EVIL… It’s commonly understood that, depending on your geographical location, modern-day Santa Claus originally evolved from either the Christian legend of St. Nicholas of Myra – a particularly charitable 3rd-century Greek Bishop who developed a…

LADIES OF THE LAKE BLACK SWAN Starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis Directed by Darren Aronofsky Written by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John J. McLaughlin Fox Horror fans don’t necessarily know much about ballet’s most famous production, Swan Lake, which is a good thing because it means Black Swan will be that much more of a mindfuck for those unfamiliar with the story’s central metamorphosis. Director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler) calls the film a psychological thriller, which it most definitely is. Portman’s fragile Nina is pushed to her limits when cast as the prima ballerina in Swan Lake; as her lecherous company director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) keeps drilling into her, she may be perfect for the innocent White Swan but lacks the passion…

IN LUSTIG WE TRUST MANIAC 30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION (1980) Blu-ray Starring Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro and Abigail Clayton Directed by William Lustig Written by C.A. Rosenberg and Joe Spinell Blue Underground It’s hard to believe that this 42nd St. classic is 30 years old. It was one of those films on VHS that kids would lower their voices when speaking about. “Have you seen Maniac? It’s so gross!” Joe Spinell, a popular character actor who had appeared in such notable ’70s films as The Godfather and Rocky, conceived Maniac as a star vehicle for himself. He modelled his sweaty, gibbering Frank Zito on real-life serial killers, as opposed to the unstoppable murder machines raking in big box office bucks in Halloween and Friday the 13th. He also enlisted the aid…

It sucks being a werewolf. Forget about the hair in embarrassing places or the compulsion to chow down on family members, it’s the current lack of reverence within the horror community that’s most disconcerting. In recent years, vampires and zombies have skyrocketed in popularity while werewolves have been left somewhat in the dust. Sure, they can be seen in popular franchises such as Twilight and True Blood, but let’s be honest, in those worlds it’s the vampires that get all the respect. One of the problems with the werewolf’s decline in popularity may be that while other monsters have received significant facelifts within their respective mythologies, most werewolf stories are still retelling the same basic narrative established in 1941’s The Wolf Man. To wit: boy (or girl) gets bitten, is…

Mysterious ape men, sea monsters, bloodsucking aliens, snow creatures, living dinosaurs, human-sized moths, giant spiders, thunderbirds, Tasmanian tigers… they all populate the world of cryptozoology, which is defined as “the study of hidden animals.” For as long as mankind has been around, there have been tales of strange and fantastic creatures that lurk on the fringes, but it wasn’t until recently that a museum dedicated solely to cryptozoology was officially established. Opened in November of 2009 by curator and world-renowned cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, the International Cryptozoology Museum is located in the picturesque city of Portland, Maine, nestled among the quirky stores and coffee shops just a few blocks from the waterfront. Rocky coasts line Portland’s age-old shipping channels, which converge here from all over the world. Ships groan, lighthouses flash…

“What I want, what I want is just your children.”MARILYN MANSON It can’t be Halloween every day (unless you’re Ministry) so we might as well celebrate Christmas. And might I respectfully suggest you put down some of the cheap plastic toys in your shopping cart and buy some music instead? A fine gift for the ankle-biters in your life is the new CD Spooky Songs for Creepy Kids by Voltaire. The New York City musician has been making fun, dark-themed folk/gypsy/cabaret music for more than a decade. And while he’s written music for children before, such as tracks for the Cartoon Network’s Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, his own CDs have displayed a more bawdy sense of humour. Now, for the first time, he’s collected all of his more…

RUE MORGUE #105 is the best single magazine I’ve ever seen about anything. Let me be more precise. There are magazines about pop culture, music, coin collecting, comic books. There are news magazines and sports magazines and women’s magazines and men’s magazines. But I have never come across a single magazine that did what it intended to do so well. The cover demands you at least open the damn thing. The binding, the paper stock – you can feel in your hands the high quality of the physical product. The selection of photos; the excellence of the writing – there were very few articles I wasn’t interested in, and there were a few where I was surprised at how interested I became. You take what you cover seriously, yet it’s…

CASE NO. 107 Icelandic folklore states that everyone should receive at least one piece of new clothing for Christmas, or run the risk of being eaten by the Christmas Cat, an oversized and particularly vicious black feline. To protest the release of the 1984 film Silent Night, Deadly Night, critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel read the credits out loud on their television show while saying, “Shame” after each name. A traditional Christmas ritual from Greece involves a priest tossing a crucifix into the town’s water supply to keep the Kallikantzari (gremlin-like spirits) at bay. These spirits can also be chased away by burning a shoe or salt, or by placing the jawbone of a pig at one’s front door. Roy Moore’s Black Christmas (1974) screenplay was allegedly inspired by…

NOW THAT GUSSIED-UP EXPLOITATION FLICKS SUCH AS PIRANHA 3D AND MACHETE ARE POPPING UP IN MAINSTREAM MULTIPLEXES, IT’S A PERFECT TIME TO REDISCOVER EERIE PUBLICATIONS. AFTER ALL, THE LURID HORROR MAGAZINES, WITH TITLES SUCH AS TALES FROM THE TOMB, WEIRD AND WITCHES’ TALES, WHICH HIT THEIR STRIDE IN THE 1960S AND ’70S, ARE ESSENTIALLY GRINDHOUSES BUILT OF CHEAP PAPER AND BLACK INK. OVERSHADOWED BY ADMITTEDLY CLASSIER ACTS SUCH AS SKYWALD’S NIGHTMARE AND JAMES WARREN’S CREEPY AND EERIE MAGAZINES, THE EERIE PUBLICATIONS LINE HAS BEEN ALL BUT FORGOTTEN. Most of the stories in the Eerie Publications family of titles were simply redrawn versions of previously published horror comics, but with one important innovation: gore by the gallons. Horror comics before the establishment of the Comics Code Authority might have been grisly,…

IN ARMS’ WAY SH! THE OCTOPUS (1937)DVD Starring Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins and Marcia Ralston Directed by William C. McGann Written by Ralph Spence, Ralph Murphy and Donald Gallaher Warner Archive Most fans should be familiar with the classic Old Dark House setting in horror cinema, but how about an Old Dark Lighthouse? By the 1930s, the trappings of the Old Dark House genre had largely become clichés, and subsequent films started to add new wrinkles to the formula to poke fun at the convoluted plot twists, red herrings and spookshow tricks. Running a scant 54 minutes, Sh! The Octopus is a lighthouse-set chiller that ranks as one of the most frenzied and fun parodies of classic suspense films. Things get started (naturally) on a dark and stormy evening, as…

ZOMBIES HAVE BECOME AN EPIDEMIC ALRIGHT. FROM MOVIES TO BOOKS TO COMICS TO VIDEO GAMES, THE WALKING DEAD ARE ALIVE AND WELL IN THE MARKETPLACE. THAT SAID, YOU’D BE FORGIVEN IF YOU WROTE OFF BOB FINGERMAN’S NEW BOOK PARIAH – OUT NOW FROM TOR – AS THE LATEST CASH-IN ON THE ZOMBIE CRAZE. The author himself has even coined a term to describe this affliction from which you might be suffering: “zombie fatigue.” “It’s got to be a bit hard to be discerning as a consumer if you like zombies and there’s suddenly this avalanche of material,” says Fingerman, who’s perhaps best known for his work as both writer and illustrator of such comics series as Minimum Wage and the graphic novel Recess Pieces. “There’s a candy commercial I saw…

VOYEURISM AND SNUFF FILMS have been prominent in Canadian news recently. The public and media have been transfixed by the story of Russell Williams, the former commander of the country’s largest Canadian Forces base, who confessed to two first-degree murders, two sexual assaults with forcible confinement, and 82 break-and-enter charges. He began by stealing women’s underwear, which he then started to put on and wear while masturbating in their beds, before progressing to rape and murder. He documented his crimes with photographs and video – including one of the murders – which he stored on two hard drives hidden in the ceiling of the basement of his home. That evidence will be destroyed upon Williams’ death. This chilling escalation from voyeurism to rape, murder and snuff is also the foundation…

EVER THINK ABOUT EXACTLY HOW YOU WANT TO BE REMEMBERED? WOULDN’T IT BE COOL TO CUT A RECORD FOR YOUR LOVED ONES, MUSICAL TALENT BE DAMNED, RIGHT BEFORE YOU MAKE THAT FINAL PUSH INTO THE UNKNOWN? Taking a left field approach to the art of dying, UK-based company And Vinyly (andvinyly.com) is determined to make your death something special – by pressing your cremated remains into a vinyl record, one that can be personalized with sound effects, music, artwork or personal messages for those you’ve left behind. “Death is something not many people talk openly about,” says company founder J., also known as The Undertaker. “The unknown is naturally frightening, so perhaps by providing an excuse to contemplate this in a creative, long-lasting way And Vinyly can reduce this fear…

Directing films featuring schizophrenic babysitters, epic disasters and busty lesbian vampires. To a horror fan, that’s quite a career. Roy Ward Baker, a prolific British filmmaker who helmed many horror and science fiction classics for Hammer Films, including Quatermass and the Pit, The Vampire Lovers, Scars of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, died October 5 at the age of 93. “Baker was always workmanlike, with occasional flourishes,” says Hammer historian Robert Simpson, who appeared in a 2008 Hammer documentary with the filmmaker, from his home in Northern Ireland. “His strengths lie in teasing out the drama and the performances of his cast. … He’s up amongst the great Hammer directors certainly.” Born Roy Horace Baker in London on December 19, 1916,…

1 ELVIRA ACTION FIGURE $17.99 Stop the presses, you can now get your hands on the bust of Elvira – or, rather, a full-length, seven-inch figure of the legendary horror hostess, complete with dungeon display base. You know you want one, darling. Wrap your mitts around the Mistress of the Dark at amoktime.com. 2 ZOMBIE T-SHIRT $15.99 Does your inner zombie lurk a little too close to the surface for comfort? Warn your mates with this appropriately bloodthirsty T-shirt; just pull it over your head and, thanks to the print on its interior, transform yourself into a rotting, enraged, flesh-hungry army of one. Walk with the dead at deezteez.com. 3 CATACOMB BOXERS $120 The swirling skull-and-bones fabric of these shorts, designed by the late Alexander McQueen, is dark and elegant.…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE BITES OFF MORE THAN HE CAN CHEW ALL THUMBS TERROR OVERLOAD Big Bite Entertainment I had never heard of Big Bite Entertainment – a distribution label specializing in indie horror films – before a bunch of their titles were foisted upon me. Randomly picking three to review, I thought I’d start with the worst-sounding one. Terror Overload is a three-film anthology with a wraparound story about a Twinkie-munching trucker trying to scare the pants off of a sexy hitchhiker by recounting spooky stories. The trucker’s anecdotes deal with cannibalism, rape and murder, and there’s even a quirky tale about a Chupacabra-esque creature that feeds on the inhabitants of a backwoods brothel. Though it boasts gratuitous nudity and half-decent gore, it suffers from shitty sound quality, amateurish…

I can’t even begin to calculate the number of times the phrase, “How did I manage to miss this film until now?” has appeared in this column. Given that The Incredible Melting Man was released in 1977, it’s officially taken me 33 years to discover it, a fact I find both inexplicable and sad. I have no excuse, and can only attempt to make things right by exhorting the masses to track down this delirious, cheap-ass demolition derby of a film. Given pop culture’s tendency to go all misty-eyed for the popular nuggets of yesteryear, it’s tempting to pigeonhole TIMM as a nod to ’50sera sci-fi. After all, few nostalgia crazes could match America’s fixation with all things ’50s during the 1970s; think American Graffiti (admittedly set in ’62, but…

TOUCHSTONES OF GOTHIC HORROR: A FILM GENEALOGY OF ELEVEN MOTIFS AND IMAGES David Huckvale McFarland One of the cornerstones of horror cinema, the Gothic chiller was a popular genre staple for decades. Exemplified by the output of Universal, Hammer Studios, A.I.P. and Amicus, these films, which often featured the now-standard trappings of ruined castles, decrepit cemeteries, supernatural beings and family curses, drew upon a number of 18th-and 19th-century influences – namely art, literature, architecture and nature. With Touchstones of Gothic Horror, author David Huckvale identifies and analyzes eleven recurring themes that run throughout many Gothic horror films from the 1920s through to the 1970s. Architectural motifs such as the ubiquitous grand staircase – where many screen villains like to make their introduction (both Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee’s Dracula greet…

DEADLY DANGEROUS DECENT DULL DRIVEL DOA DEAD ON ARRIVAL SOUNDTRACK DRAMMI GOTICI (GOTHIC DREAMS) Ennio Morricone GDM In 1976, Ennio Morricone scored a four-part Gothic horror anthology for Italian TV, but instead of lounge or rock elements, he chose to draw from his own burgeoning concert writing, particularly his chamber work. The core instruments include mandolin, clarinet, violin, tambourine and guitar, and besides the title music (which incorporates sound effects), the score proper consists of demented little themes arranged for chamber instruments. Prohibition-era jazz pops up in one cue, where a whistler glides atop a skittering rhythm, and a trio of organs provides a carnivalesque lament that degenerates into near-discordance. Edda Dell’Orso’s voice is one of many dissonant elements in an angular suspense cue, but she adds…

NOW PLAYING CASTLEVANIA: LORDS OF SHADOW, DEAD RISING 2, DEAD SPACE: IGNITION CASTLEVANIA: LORDS OF SHADOW PS3, Xbox 360 Konami In an age of remakes and reboots, it was only a matter of time before the longest-running horror adventure series (twenty games and counting) was refreshed for a new generation of gamers. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a re-imagining of the classic franchise that introduces players to a new member of the Belmont clan, Gabriel, and new big bads, The Lords of Shadow. Brooding anti-hero Gabriel – a warrior of the Brotherhood of Light (a holy order of knights who battle the supernatural nasties of the world) – is on a mission to avenge the murder of his wife, defeat the Lords of Shadow and locate a relic known…